Krebs on Security

In-depth security news and investigation

Posts Tagged: Shellshock

A previously unknown security flaw in Bugzilla — a popular online bug-tracking tool used by Mozilla and many of the open source Linux distributions — allows anyone to view detailed reports about unfixed vulnerabilities in a broad swath of software. Bugzilla is expected today to issue a fix for this very serious weakness, which potentially exposes a veritable gold mine of vulnerabilities that would be highly prized by cyber criminals and nation-state actors.

The Bugzilla mascot.

Multiple software projects use Bugzilla to keep track of bugs and flaws that are reported by users. The Bugzilla platform allows anyone to create an account that can be used to report glitches or security issues in those projects. But as it turns out, that same reporting mechanism can be abused to reveal sensitive information about as-yet unfixed security holes in software packages that rely on Bugzilla.

A developer or security researcher who wants to report a flaw in Mozilla Firefox, for example, can sign up for an account at Mozilla’s Bugzilla platform. Bugzilla responds automatically by sending a validation email to the address specified in the signup request. But recently, researchers at security firm Check Point Software Technologies discovered that it was possible to create Bugzilla user accounts that bypass that validation process.

“Our exploit allows us to bypass that and register using any email we want, even if we don’t have access to it, because there is no validation that you actually control that domain,” said Shahar Tal, vulnerability research team leader for Check Point. “Because of the way permissions work on Bugzilla, we can get administrative privileges by simply registering using an address from one of the domains of the Bugzilla installation owner. For example, we registered as admin@mozilla.org, and suddenly we could see every private bug under Firefox and everything else under Mozilla.”